Diplomatic posting – An Irishman’s Diary about Anthony Trollope, the British ambassador, and the GPO

Historic venue

I don’t know if the British ambassador, Dominick Chilcott, felt the hand of history on his shoulder on Tuesday night, but even if he didn’t, he must have been a little nervous. Speaking at a book launch in the GPO, he had a dying Cúchulainn, complete with raven, behind him. And then there was the rest of the building.

Security was discreet but tight for the event. Those attending were brought in through the rear-office entrance and led via winding corridors back out to the main atrium. But it’s not unknown, apparently, for the place to be taken over by radicals intent on declaring a republic. So I suppose they had to be careful.

Fortunately for the ambassador, the focus of the evening was Anthony Trollope, the 19th-century English writer who lived in Ireland for many years and, via some of his 47 novels, did heroic work in explaining this country to Britain, and vice versa.

This meant that the UK’s current and official representative couldn’t go far wrong in the GPO’s sensitive surrounds. There will be bigger tests ahead, no doubt. In fact, Chilcott’s tour of duty would normally end before the main 2016 commemorations, but it’s being extended to ensure, vis-a-vis the hand of history, that Britain has a safe pair of shoulders in place.

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In the meantime, the book he helped publish was called Writing the Frontier: Anthony Trollope between Britain and Ireland, by John McCourt. A Dublin-born university professor who now lives in Italy, McCourt is also the author a masterly account of James Joyce's years in Trieste, published in 2001. He's spent much of the intervening period studying his new subject – an epic challenge.

As he told the audience, having 47 Trollopes around the house, in various stages of undress, can be a strain on family life. McCourt apologised to his teenage sons for causing them to grow up in an environment where there were Trollopes in the bedroom, living room, and bathroom. Somehow, the boys survived the experience – maybe because they never picked up any of the Trollopes themselves.

This is more than can be said for the ambassador. He confessed that, as a 14-year-old, he read all six of the author’s lengthy “Palliser” novels in an attempt to impress some girls (they were bookish types). That’s a strategy probably never attempted by any other 14-year-old boy, before or since. But the books did at least give him a grounding in the history of Anglo-Irish politics, so his efforts may have paid off long-term.

Trollope was not just a great writer, of course – his day job in Ireland was as post office administrator (hence the venue for book launch), something at which he also excelled. Many of the 16-mile-a-day rural delivery routes he designed were also classics, if occasionally a bit inaccessible without a horse. His approach to public relations remains much admired too. An Post’s Heritage Officer Stephen Ferguson told the gathering of a daunting trip the writer once made up to darkest Cavan to meet a country squire who had written repeated letters of complaint. The squire welcomed him warmly, insisting he stay for dinner, then for the night. Every time Trollope tried to introduce the subject of the complaints his host deflected him. Finally, next day after breakfast, he admitted he had no complaints really. He was just lonely and wrote angry letters to pass the time. Ferguson assured us that Trollope’s patience with the Cavan man is still the model for An Post today.

Trollope’s relationship with Ireland wasn’t all good. His period here coincided with the Famine, when his natural sympathy with the people had to vie with the heartless Malthusian economics to which his generation was in thrall. Also, later in life, and growing reactionary with age, he opposed home rule.

The British ambassador dealt deftly with these subjects. But in the writer’s overall defence, he quoted Shane Leslie’s opinion of Trollope as “the only Englishman who could write an Irish novel without a mistake”. As for Chilcott, he was equally adroit, surviving his visit to the shrine of Irish republicanism without faux pas.The book’s publication coincides with Trollope’s major birthday – he would have been 200 tomorrow. And as McCourt said, it’s lucky he was born in April 1815, not a year later, “or I wouldn’t be in here”.

As it was, he and a few stragglers from the launch held out heroically in the GPO until late evening. Then, hopelessly surrounded by security men, we beat a desperate retreat and regrouped in a bar across the road.

@FrankmcnallyIT